1. Field
Example embodiments relate to spatial light modulators using surface plasmons, holographic 3-dimensional display apparatuses including the spatial light modulators, and/or methods of modulating spatial light.
2. Description of Related Art
3-dimensional (3D) image display devices that realistically and effectively display an image are increasingly required in various fields, such as fields pertaining to medical images, games, advertisements, education, and the military. Accordingly, as a method of displaying a 3D image, a holographic method or a stereoscopic method is widely studied.
A holographic method uses a principle that a coherent signal obtained by overlapping incident light from an object and coherent reference light is recorded and reproduced. The holographic method is an ideal display method for realizing a 3D image. Since Dennis Gabor, an English scientist, developed the first hologram in the 1940s, research into holography has been conducted by many scientists. Recently, a variety of holographic techniques for displaying, for example, a pulsed laser hologram for capturing a dynamic image, a stereohologram having wide spatial scene display and wide viewing angle, an embossed hologram that can be mass produced, a natural color hologram displaying natural colors, and a digital hologram using a digital imaging device, and electronic holography for displaying an electronic hologram, have been developed. Electronic holography, used since 1990, is an imaging technique of the next generation. According to electronic holography, an image of an object is reproduced on a display device by scanning an image of the object in units of pixels to form a hologram, sampling and transmitting data contained in the hologram, and reproducing the hologram from the transmitted data.
However, an amount of data contained in a hologram is too large to be sampled and transmitted, and thus research into generating a hologram via a computer and displaying the hologram via an electro-optical method has been conducted. In addition, research into various hologram systems has been conducted to overcome the limits of a hologram. For example, in order to reduce an amount of calculation data of a hologram, research into displaying a hologram by eye-tracking, and research into improving performance of a hologram optical device including a spatial light modulator and a hologram recording method and applying the improvement to electronic holography, have been conducted.